


Frozen

by MykEsprit



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bodyguard Romance, Bodyguard!Hermione, F/M, Fluff, NOT a Muggle AU, Nothing to do with the movie Frozen, Romance, Scientist!Draco, ice storm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21567907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MykEsprit/pseuds/MykEsprit
Summary: Being Draco Malfoy's bodyguard was a boring occupation--until one Christmas Day, when chaos was unleashed. Written for the D/Hr Advent 2019.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 13
Kudos: 157
Collections: D/Hr Advent 2019





	Frozen

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the mods of D/HR Advent for hosting another fabulous fest! And thanks to everyone who was kind of enough to think of me for this fest! Thank you for the nomination!

Hermione scrolled through the page, eyes flitting over rows of video stills. She had already watched the one with the cat playing piano several times, and then there were compilations of them falling off various pieces of furniture. There, too, was the one with the litter of kittens, their exhausted mother gazing blankly into the camera. 

Video after video after video—all adorable, at first, but there _was_ a point of diminishing returns in terms of entertainment, and that was sometime after hour eight.

She bit back an irritated growl as she glanced at her watch. Only twenty minutes had passed since she last checked, and knowing _his_ pattern by now, she had better pace herself. She had hours left to go, and there were only so many cat videos on the internet.

The scroll bar reached the end of the page. She glared at the traitorous little rectangle for abandoning her to the utter boredom of her workday. As she guided the arrow cursor to the X on the corner and pressed the button, a flash of light caught her attention. Hermione glanced over the top of her screen.

 _He_ , at least, was fully engrossed in what he was doing, muttering something under his breath as he directed the flow of magic from his wand. Ice blue fog flew from the tip of the aspen wood, curling around an orb at the center of the room. As he finished the incantation, the fog softened into wisps until it completely disappeared. He frowned.

“Everything all right?” Hermione asked.

His head whipped in her direction. Grey eyes blinked into focus. “It’s…” Draco Malfoy’s frown deepened as he shifted his gaze back to the orb, its chrome shell gleaming and unblemished. “...fine.” He spared her a wistful grin and shrugged.

Hermione pressed her lips together, nodding curtly. The word “Confidential” was already stamped on most files and parchments all over the room. Not for the first time, it hung in the air between them.

He raised the wand again. It was a powerful one, perhaps more so because it was the only wand allowed to perform magic in the room. Between his fingers peeked a series of numbers burned into the otherwise-unadorned wood. She had watched Ollivander place them after he fine-tuned its range of magic and calibrated it against his entire catalog. Steps he usually didn’t take for First Years claiming their wands for school—but, then again, most wands weren’t uniquely made for stringent experimentation.

As the flow of fog resumed, jealousy bubbled in her chest. Hermione was a decorated former Auror with specialized training in Curse Diffusion and Defense; She held a degree in Biomagical Theory from the Salem Institute of Wizardry and finished with the best marksmanship record in her batch at Hit Wizard training—

And she spent most of her working days on her bum, stuck in a room dampened against almost all magic, scouring the internet for something to do.

She rubbed her eyebrows, fighting the screen-induced headache threatening behind her eyes. “Why did I decide to go private?” she muttered.

“Did you say something?” Draco’s sharp gaze slid to her. 

She shook her head. “Not at all.”

His eyebrows knitted, but he gave her a quick nod before returning his attention to his work. Dense fog engulfed the orb. Snakes of wires jutted through it like eager fingers through candyfloss; they fell in loops down the workbench and towards the back of the room to a set of computers. 

Hermione didn’t know what it was—officially. But she had spent sixteen hours a day, every day for the past four months inside this laboratory. She had been briefed of Draco’s project, although the proprietary particulars were held from her. From her observations, however, she had a guess as to what the device might have been—

And all of its wonderful potential.

Every day, she watched as Draco worked, brows furrowed as he continued for hours...days...even _weeks_ on end. It looked as if his hair had not been near a pair of shears for a time. She suspected it was long enough that those in his posh social circle would be appalled at his appearance.

Hermione didn’t mind. His hair was still an inch or two shy of unkempt, and, to be honest, she rather liked how he brushed away the lock of hair that often fell across his forehead. 

Still, as he resumed his ministrations on the orb, an envious voice in her head complained that Draco Malfoy generally got to _do_ things while she sat back and did nothing.

 _Not nothing_ , she chided herself. They simply had different jobs to do.

His job was to save the world.

And hers—

Her job was to make sure he didn’t die while doing so.

* * *

_Four Months Ago_

  
_Harry laced his fingers together on top of his desk, broad shoulders squared. It was a stance he adopted whenever he wanted to play the part of Serious Head Auror. As she sat across from him, she oscillated between amusement at his tactics and trepidation at his reason for posturing just for her._

_She arched a brow at the file he had slid across. Gingerly, she picked it up, opening the heavy manila cover. Her eyebrows rose as she glanced at the photo on the first page—a familiar smirk and a set of sharp grey eyes boring into her. She flipped through the thick dossier, her frown settling deeper after every page. When she got to the end, she slammed the file shut, leveling a stern glare on her former boss and soon-to-be-ex-best friend._

_“Are you fucking with me?” she asked._

_Harry winced. “Your stint in America has done wonders to your vocabulary.”_

_“Really, Harry. You made me come all the way here for this?” She threw the file back on the desk. “If you were anyone else, I’d be insulted.”_

_“It’s a special project, one of high concern and priority for many governments.”_

_“It’s a glorified babysitting job.”_

_“ Lots of governments, Hermione. Wizard and Muggle alike.” Harry sighed, leaning against the back of his chair and tossing his spectacles on the desk. He rubbed the bridge of his nose as he wearily explained. “That’s part of the problem. There are too many interested parties—the applications of his research range from life-changing to devastating—and there’s fear of it getting into the wrong hands.” Harry stared at her. For a moment, she was struck by how young he looked without his glasses. “We need someone to protect him.”_

_“‘We’?”_

_“The international coalition overseeing the project. We need someone capable and smart—and is not directly employed by any one governing agency.”_

_Hermione grumbled. “And I fit the bill.” She knew she was whingeing, but when she decided to leave her position as a Hit Wizard to work in the private sector, it was with the assurance that she could take or leave jobs as it pleased her. But with her funds dwindling by the day, and Harry’s puppy-dog gaze aimed mercilessly at her, the words ‘Fine, I’ll do it’ danced at the tip of her tongue._

_And perhaps she had given herself away. Whether by skill or intuition, Harry planted his elbows in front of him, green eyes gleaming as he leaned towards her. “We need you. It’s for the fate of the world.”_

_Reluctantly, a grin tugged at the corner of her lips. “Are you trying to wrangle me into another one of your crusades, Harry Potter?”_

_Harry’s shoulders relaxed. A self-satisfied smile grew on his face, one with undertones of smug confidence that he had her hooked and reeled in._

_Tosser._

_“It’s not my crusade,” Harry said, nudging the file back towards her. “It’s his .”_

* * *

  
  
Despite the nuances of the spell, the words fell from Draco’s lips automatically. He had cast it so many times over the past several months that he could do it in his sleep—had done so, in fact, only a week ago, when he woke up in a fog so dense, it took him nearly an hour to find the door. For now, that fog was flowing, controlled, from the lab wand to the Terrasphere, where it folded and seeped into the metal.

At least, that was the intention. His data indicated that the spell was fusing into the metal alloy layer by layer every time he enchanted the object. What he hoped it _wasn’t_ doing was piercing into the shell and disturbing the highly-combustible elements inside because that would mitigate the progress he had been making for several weeks, and also because he likely wouldn’t survive the explosion to make the necessary corrections.

A movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he glanced in that direction—not that he needed to, of course. There was only one other person who accompanied him to the lab: Hermione Granger, his appointed bodyguard, although he would never call her that to her face. 

Not again, anyway, since the first and _only_ time he had, she had threatened to break his pointy nose.

Their working relationship could have only improved from there.

Before she was a constant presence in his life, he had refused any form of protective detail. But two assassination attempts and a short-lived abduction later, he relented.

Draco was glad for the company. Not that she was particularly loquacious, but he lived a practically self-isolated existence, and he had found Hermione to be more...interesting than what he remembered from youth. 

Whenever he allowed himself a respite from his work, however brief, they struck up a conversation. Science, politics, magical theory, literature—really, anything they talked about was nothing short of engrossing, and more and more, he felt reluctant to return to work.

Lately, it had been getting worse, and he had only himself to blame after spending weeks on end not seeing anyone other than Hermione. He considered himself high-class and educated, a member of an evolved species, even. But his primitive male brain would, at times, get distracted by the way her curls escaped her strict bun, or how she looked when she was lost in thought—a little wrinkle perfectly situated between her eyebrows, her lips quirked.

She must have felt his gaze on her, because she looked up. Her eyes cleared as she focused on him; then her gaze shifted to his right, and her eyes widened to saucers. “Malfoy?” she asked, a warning in her tone.

He swiveled back to the workbench, remembering that he was in the middle of a very delicate experiment, one that couldn’t afford a second of his inattention.

The Terrasphere hummed. No, not hummed—-it was vibrating, a force from somewhere deep inside it building up with such violence that it bounced in the air, as if it imprisoned some sort of rabid animal.

Draco parted his lips, about to yell a warning—

And then he was off his feet, hurtling through the air as a frozen blast threw him across the room.

* * *

Hermione rolled to her side, tossing whatever had landed on top of her during the icy explosion.

The wind roared in her ears. Shards of ice, some as thin as needles, others as thick as Hagrid’s arms, flew from the epicenter, where the crystal ball once was. Hermione threw an arm over her face.

Wind whipped around the room in high speed. Across the room, Draco struggled to get on his feet, the gusts forcing him off-balance. Finally, he planted both feet on the ground, leaning into the wind—

Just as an icicle the size of a Beater’s bat shot from the source of the chaos, aiming straight for him.

Hermione jumped to her feet and ran, leaping over debris in her path, ducking the icy bludgers flying towards her. She threw out her arms and tackled him to the ground—just as the icicle grazed the fabric of her robe at her back.

She landed on top of Draco, whose arms quickly wrapped around her, face in a mask of shock. 

“We have to take cover!” she yelled.

As the wind picked up, Hermione glanced around, strands of her hair whipping around her head. She spotted a desk several paces away. The side facing the epicenter of the storm was quickly being covered with ice, but the underside of the desk had been protected by its metal covering, and it was only getting more protected the more the ice formed.

It was their best hope for survival.

Hermione dragged herself to her hands and knees, slouching low to avoid being hit by the flying icicles. She grabbed Draco by the front of his lab coat, hauling him beside her. “Come on!” 

They scrambled across the floor and dove for the desk. Unceremoniously, she stuffed him in the little hollow underneath, and then squeezed in after him.

* * *

  
  


In all, it was only a short time later that the wind died down; but as they crawled out of their shelter, it was if they had been fast-forwarded to the next Ice Age. 

Draco’s jaw fell as he took in the room. Everything glittered and sparkled, perfectly intact—under what looked like two feet of clear ice. 

The face of the desk under which they had been taking shelter was completely engulfed in ice, icicles jutting from the sides in the direction of the wind like frozen tentacles. From the ceiling, icicles dangled precariously, the light which had miraculously stayed intact shining through them like expensive chandeliers. The walls had grown two feet thicker as well, the door behind them like a painting behind glass.

“Well,” Hermione said. “That’s going to be a problem.”

He stared at the only door out of the room, heart sinking. “That really is.”

“Not that.”

He glanced at her quizzically.

She was pointing to something on the ground, buried under the ice. “That.” 

It was a wand— _his_ wand. The only thing allowed to perform magic in the lab. The only thing that could have saved them.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “That’s a real problem.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got an ice pick lying around.”

Draco shrugged. “Forgot it in my other lab coat. Sorry.”

Hermione sighed as she glanced around the room. “Right. So the only thing that could have magicked us out of this situation is currently on ice. There’s about two feet of ice between us and escape from this winter wonderland.”

“Charming. So how do we get out?”

“I don’t think we can.”

“You know, of all the deaths I’ve imagined for myself,” he wondered out loud, “dying inside an ice cube never crossed my mind.”

“I’m sure we’ll be rescued,” Hermione said confidently, and he almost bought, had it not for the visible shivering of her shoulders. “I’m supposed to submit my daily report to Harry and the advisory panel in—” She tapped on the face of her wristwatch, frowning. “Five hours. If I miss it, he’ll come down here, squadron at his back, blasting those doors open.”

“Great. Harry-bloody-Potter is to come and rescue me.” Draco glared at the door. “Allow me to reconsider the dying by ice cube scenario.”

* * *

  
  


Hermione sighed, a cloud of vapors forming from her breath. “Where’s global warming when you need it?” she grumbled as she rubbed her hands together.

Draco turned towards her languidly, his expression decidedly _not_ amused.

“Sorry,” she whispered, feeling genuinely sheepish.

His expression melted slightly. “My apologies. It’s hard for me to joke about something I consider to be my life’s work.”

She placed a hand on his sleeve. “I shouldn’t have said that. I know how hard you work.” She laughed quietly. “From first-hand experience.”

For a moment, they settled into silence, a smile forming on his lips. “You know, Granger—” He nudged her lightly with his elbow, “When you were first assigned to me, I was...apprehensive.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You thought I wouldn’t be up to the task?”

“No, that’s not it at all,” he said. “It’s just— Well, remember back in Hogwarts, whenever a professor asked a question, you would literally bounce off your seat because you knew the answer to everything? Or that time we were partnered in Potions, and you never even let me near the cauldron, even though I had memorized the entire list of ingredients and the proper way to prepare them to make the antidote for the Mountain Tigerbite?”

Slowly, Hermione nodded.

“I thought...maybe…” Draco sighed, leaning his head against the back of their little shelter. “I thought that once you got in my lab, you would take over it all. That you would be looking over my shoulder the entire time, telling me what to do and yelling at me that I’m doing it all wrong.”

At first, he didn’t get a response. Cautiously, he peeked at her from the corner of his eye.

A bemused smile settled across her lips. “It’s been a long time since Hogwarts,” she said softly. “Besides, I respect your work too much to interfere.”

His eyebrows flew up his forehead.

“I only have a casual understanding of the theory of terraforming, and I’ve never even thought applying Muggle tech with magic, like you’re doing.”

“You...know what I was working on?”

“I didn’t _know_ , but—” She waved her hand, a feat in such a small space. “I mean, obviously.”

Draco nodded deeply.

“In my years of experience,” she said, “I’ve learned to understand where my knowledge and expertise ends, and when I need to rely on the knowledge of others.” She pinned him with her dark eyes. “And the more I watched you, the more faith I had in you.”

It felt as if he was wrapped in a warm blanket—whether because of the gravity of her admission or the heaviness of her gaze, he didn’t quite know. “Thank you,” he replied hoarsely. 

* * *

  
  


“Potter sure is taking his time in rescuing us.”

Hermione frowned as she glanced at her watch. “He _is_ a bit later than I thought he would be, but that’s to be expected. With it being Christmas and all—”

He pivoted towards her. “It’s Christmas?”

“Yes.” She chuckled.

“Oh. I had thought we were in late November.”

“You really need to get out of this lab once in a while. Perhaps get some sun.”

Draco was about to quip that he would never actively seek out sunshine, but a thought struck him. “Wait,” he said. “It’s Christmas.”

Hermione arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“So why were you here?”

“Same reason why you’re here.” She shrugged a shoulder. “Work.”

Guilt settled at the pit of his stomach. “I’m sorry. If it wasn’t for me, you could be out there spending Christmas with—well, anyone else—”

She waved his words away. “It’s hardly the first holiday I’ve missed because of work.”

“There’s...no one around to resent you for missing all those holidays? No—” He cleared his throat. “Boyfriends, or...anything of the sort?”

“Well, if they resented me for working, they were quickly removed from the equation.” She snorted.

Whatever negative emotions swirling in his gut quelled.

“Besides, it’s a good thing I was here,” she said. “Otherwise, come Boxing Day, I would have come back to you encased in a block of ice.”

“Remind me to give you a thank you note for saving me from being an ice kebab. Or at least a Christmas present. Is there anything in particular that you’d like?”

“Just that I come out of this with all my toes intact.” She shivered.

“Not sure if I can guarantee that we still won’t freeze to death.”

“We could always take off our clothes and share body heat.”

Heat flashed up his neck and into his cheeks, feeling warm for the first time in hours.

She leaned close to him, whispering, “Joking. Again.” She stared at him for a minute longer, chuckling quietly to herself.

“What?” he asked, still feeling dazed. “Huh?’

“Nothing.” She touched the tip of his ear with a tip of her finger. “I’m glad to have brought a bit of color back on you. You were getting frighteningly blue.”

His gaze fell to her lips, which turned a deep purple from the cold. Without a word, he reached for her, his thumb ghosting the outline of her bottom lip.

Hermione stared back at him, frozen.

Slowly, he lowered his head, waiting for her to pull away. Instead, she leaned towards him by a fraction. Draco pressed his lips against hers, cool and dry to the touch—but only for that first contact. He parted his lips, the tip of his tongue lightly tracing the seam of her lips. She parted her lips effortlessly and responded in kind.

For several minutes, the cold was no longer a problem.

It was only for need of oxygen that he pulled back. He stared hungrily at her now pink lips. “There,” he said roughly. “Now you’ve got some color back on you, too.”

“Malfoy—”

There was a great, echoing crack, and they both turned their heads toward the door. The wall of ice over it shivered and fissured as something forced its way inside.

Quickly, they scrambled from their tiny shelter. Just as they got their feet, the wall of ice shattered. The door flew open, and Harry Potter came through, quickly followed by a half dozen of his Aurors, all geared up for an attack.

Harry glanced around the room. “What the hell happened here?”

* * *

“Sorry it took me so long to get here,” Harry said. 

Just behind him, Draco had enlisted the Aurors to put the lab back together. Hermione grinned as the trained and toughened Aurors cowered under Draco’s firm demeanor. “No worse for wear.” Her gaze shifted to her best friend, who was grinning at her with an annoying level of amusement. “What?”

He shook his head—rather too innocently. “Nothing.”

“Harry.”

“If I’m being completely honest…” 

“Do go on,” she said flatly.

His grin grew wide. “I wasn’t sure what I would find when I got here. On the one hand, I was worried when you didn’t report on time like you usually do… But on the other hand…”

She pressed her lips together.

“Let’s just say, I had half a mind to tell my Aurors to keep one hand over their eyes just in case we barged into...anything.”

She slapped him on the arm. 

“What?” He threw his arms up in defense. “I’ve seen your face whenever you make your report on him.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You glow,” he said smugly. “Like a bloody Christmas tree.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re daft,” she said, but she couldn’t help the way her heat flushed at his words.

With a laugh, Harry threw an arm across her shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I’m grateful nothing happened. Can you imagine that HR nightmare?” He mocked a shiver. “I would have been buried in paperwork ‘til Easter.”

* * *

The cleanup crew was busy until late into the night. When all the ice had melted, and most things put back in place, Draco finally deemed it fine to dismiss everyone. The Aurors stumbled out of the lab, faces grim and fatigued except for Harry, who had winked at her before taking his leave.

Hermione righted the table at which she usually sat, picking up her laptop from the floor.

“It’s almost as if nothing happened.”

He wasn’t very close as he said it, but his voice sent shivers down her spine. A strange sense of bashfulness overcame her, and she turned around slowly, finding it hard to meet his eyes. “Almost.”

When she met his gaze, she found a smile on his lips—wholesome and undemanding. If she was anyone else, and if _he_ was anyone else, she would have described it as ‘tender’. “ _Almost_.”

It was as if a weight was taken off her chest. She grinned broadly. “Are you heading out?” 

He shrugged. “I might pop in at the Manor for a bit, since it’s Christmas, and I should probably put in an appearance before I get taken out of the will, but then afterwards…” He glanced back at his workbench longingly before giving her an abashed smile. “You don’t have to come back to tonight to look after me. Christmas and all—”

“I don’t mind at all.” She waved a hand, cutting him off. “There’s work to be done.”

“There is.” Draco nodded deeply, the flush back in his cheeks as he stepped towards her involuntarily. “Happy Christmas, Granger. For however much of it that’s left tonight. I hope it’s a good one.”

* * *

  
  


By the time she returned to the lab, Draco was already working. Not a surprise.

What _was_ a surprise was present waiting at her table, a large box covered in red and gold foil paper and topped with a velvet bow.

Draco was engrossed in his work—or at least pretended to be. It might have been the trick of an eye, but she thought she spied a mischievous grin on his lips when he briefly turned his face.

Daintily, she untied the bow and tore open the paper. She opened the box and pulled out her present—a large, _warm_ jacket with a matching scarf, hat, and gloves.

Hermione laughed as she shrugged the jacket on. “Happy Christmas to you, too, Malfoy.”


End file.
